Police swamped by wave of UFO sightings

A BUNCH of balloons sparked fears at the weekend that Scotland was being invaded by aliens.

A BUNCH of balloons sparked fears at the weekend that Scotland was being invaded by aliens.

Police were swamped with phone calls from locals worried about strange lights floating over their homes.

But inquiries soon revealed that planet Earth was safe. It turned out that guests at a party in the area had been tying candles to balloons and releasing them into the sky.

Police said: "It's a game where people make a wish and release the balloons, hoping their wish will come true. We had call after call saying it was UFOs."

Cops in Grangemouth, Stirlingshire, received more than a dozen calls about the "aliens" on Saturday night.

Councillor Adrian Mahoney, who represents nearby Bo'ness, said: "It's obviously good news that in this case it wasn't an alien invasion.

"It's quite funny. I'm sure most sightings of UFOs have a rational explanation like this one."

Grangemouth is part of the notorious "Falkirk Triangle", where locals have been claiming for years to have spotted flying saucers. The town is about five miles from Scotland's UFO-sighting capital, Bonnybridge.

The chief UFO spotter in Bonnybridge, Falkirk councillor Billy Buchanan, said: "I got more than a dozen phone calls myself about these balloons but the police solved the mystery very quickly.

"It is quite funny and people can be quite easily confused. But at the end of the day there is definitely an ongoing phenomenon in this area."

Billy got hooked on UFOs after spotting a strange object in the sky over Bonnybridge in the early 90s.

He has since appeared on TV more than 270 times, with crews coming from as far as Japan and Russia to interview him.

UFO expert Nick Pope, who used to investigate sightings for the Ministry of Defence, said: "We have received reports about sightings in the Bonnybridge area. I was sceptical at first and, of course, the vast majority could quickly be discounted.

"But there were a small number of credible cases, where witnesses were police officers or pilots, for example, or where movement was captured on radar."